Effective management of cyber threats requires a rapid, coordinated response. Otherwise, a delayed or patchwork response may permit cyber-aggressors to compromise unprotected systems and establish footholds to support subsequent attacks.
Communities may share cyber-threat information, permitting community members to collaborate to collectively detect and defend against cyber threats. But collective action against cyber threats may be hampered by, among other things, incompatible formats for collecting cyber-threat information and incompatible cyber-threat information distribution methods. Moreover, many communities have not automated the exchange of cyber-threat information. Such communities may instead rely on person-to-person distribution methods such as email, listservs, websites, chatrooms, discussion threads, wikis, RSS feeds; and real-time communication methods such as chat programs and telephonic communications. But these methods of communication fail to achieve the rapid response and scalability possible through automated machine-to-machine transmission of cyber-threat information. Unfortunately, communities implementing the automated exchange of cyber-threat information have failed to coalesce around a single standardized format and method of transmission. Automated exchanges of cyber threat information among members of these communities are therefore restricted to other members of the same community. These deficiencies prevent the widespread, automated distribution of cyber-threat information necessary to combat increasingly sophisticated cyber-aggressors. Thus, methods and systems are needed for automatically retrieving, converting, and distributing cyber-threat information.